


While I Lived

by mytimehaspassed



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drug Use, M/M, Murder, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 03:58:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1495747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian comes home the same day that Mickey is released from prison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	While I Lived

**WHILE I LIVED**  
SHAMELESS  
Ian/Mickey; (mention of) Mickey/OMC(s)  
 **WARNINGS** : Spoilers for Cascading Failures, mentions of war and murder, drug use.  
 **NOTES** : thenjw asked me for a Generation Kill AU and this...is not really that. However, Ian does join the Marines. Also, it's an AU for everything after Cascading Failures.

  
**I.**

Ian comes home the same day that Mickey is released from prison.

Mandy is dark in his doorway, slim in her black clothes, the darkened tips of her fingers curling around the frame. She says, “Hey,” her voice soft in the filtered sunlight, and – from the bed, cocooned in a swath of blankets – Ian lifts half of his mouth in somewhat of a smile, somewhat of a greeting, but he can’t manage much more because the haze of the meds that they gave him in the VA hospital is hanging over him like a cloud.

Mandy steps closer to him, on the tips of her toes, silently, almost afraid. This is the same look Fiona had in the hospital, the same wavering mouth that Lip carried for days after the Marines sent him home, the same hesitance that Debbie and Carl displayed. He’s seen a lot of it in the past few weeks, and he wants nothing more than to stamp it out, obliterate it with his claws.

She says, “I’ve missed you,” and this he’s heard, too, but her voice is surprisingly strong, surprisingly lacking in empathy. It’s real and honest and almost entirely refreshing.

Mandy smiles, and he reaches out his bandaged hand, and she takes it slowly, softly, her eyes shining over with tears. She says, “He’s missed you, too,” but before Ian can say No or Stop or Fuck You, the drugs crash over him like a wave, dragging him down into a heavy sleep.

***

He sees him four days later, when Ian makes a break for the front door after Fiona puts Liam down for a nap in her room and the urge to get up to leave to get out overtakes him, lifts him up from the bed and drags him down the stairs, hunched over, hobbling, careful of his bandages. He makes it a few yards down the sidewalk before he realizes that he has nowhere to go, no place to run to, that he has no money, no coat, and that he’s dangerously close to the Milkovitch house.

“Fuck,” he says, his white breath tumbling out from his mouth. He turns around to go back, but suddenly there’s a hand on his arm, strong, warm, and he sees Mickey for the first time in eighteen months and three things happen all at once:

One. He realizes that Jesus Christ he’s never been more happy in his life to see Mickey’s stupid face here in the old neighborhood, maybe a little older, maybe a little more rough around the edges, the beard he grew in prison, the new tattoos that are peeking out where his arms and chest and neck spill from his shirt, but all the same, Mickey here with half a smirk on his face, Mickey here touching him.

Two. He realizes that – fuck – even though he’s so very happy to see him, he’s so very fucking angry that Mickey left in the first place. The anger that licks up his spine at the new scar Mickey has on his chin, either from a well-aimed fist or a poorly aimed shiv, a scar that he most certainly got in prison when he wasn’t even supposed to be there, and Ian is seething before he even wipes away the smile that curled around his lips, his hands becoming fists, his heart speeding up, so very fucking angry that this is how they left it, this is what they have left, some dumb reminder that they were good once, that they were everything they had.

Three. Mickey kisses him.

“Fuck,” Ian says again, just because it tastes good in his mouth.

***

“I heard you got religion,” Ian says afterwards, Mickey pulling the blunt dangling from Ian’s lips and placing it between his own. They’re mixing the weed with Ian’s pills and they’re both loose, languid, warm from each other’s skin.

Mickey flips him off, and “Fuck you is what I got,” he says, and then laughs, because the endorphins are still running through him, Ian’s palm balanced on Mickey’s naked thigh, Mickey’s arm around Ian’s shoulders.

They were careful about Ian’s burns, more careful than usual, Mickey asking softly every few moments, “Are you okay?” breathless, quiet, and Ian nodding, saying, “Yes, yes.” It was gentle and unlike them and Ian had lain for a moment with his forehead on the nape of Mickey’s neck and Mickey hadn’t spoken a word, but slid his arm backwards, up Ian’s flank, reassuring him, and Ian had breathed a silent thank you, kissing the skin beneath his mouth.

He tires easily and they stop and then start again, jagged puzzle pieces, sliding together awkwardly and then perfectly and then not at all when Mickey comes first and then Ian, when they separate, only to come back together again, neither of them wanting to let go yet.

They lie there for a while, close, until Mickey leaves and comes back with his stash box, rolling the paper deftly, licking it closed, telling Ian to open his mouth, setting fire to the end of the blunt with his lucky lighter. He watches Ian blow out a smoke circle, his eyes shut.

“No religion, then. Did you at least get a good fuck or two?”

Mickey turns away and Ian almost says something a little more biting, something about this being Mickey’s own fault, but he’s been making promises to his military-mandated therapist that he would stop being such an asshole, stop being so fucking angry all the time, so he says, “Sorry,” instead, hoarse, almost entirely dishonest.

Mickey shrugs and takes another pull on the joint, letting out the smoke slowly, deflating, and when he turns back to Ian, his eyes are shining. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there,” he says, and they both know he’s talking about the burns, the scars Ian will have when the doctors finally peel away his bandages, when the medical insurance runs out and there is no more medication, when Ian will become just another short story some fucking politician will jack off to on the campaign trail. It’s incredibly honest, them here with Mickey reciting words Ian’s never heard him say before, the space between them small – almost non-existent – Ian bruised and scarred and vulnerable, and Mickey holding nothing back.

Ian lifts one of his shoulders in response, the half-smile he’s had pasted on his face for days whenever someone would mention the accident springing into action, and it’s almost believable, he almost wins, until Mickey lays his palm warm on Ian’s bare freckled shoulder and Ian can’t take it – the closeness, the honesty, here in a place that was once home but hasn’t been for quite some time, here in a place that’s not sand, not guns, not screams – and it’s like something opens up inside of him, something heavy and unmoving, and suddenly he’s crying, great big heaving sobs escaping from his chest and Mickey has this look of panic on his face before he lets out an “oh,” so small and quiet that it hurts Ian even more and he’s crying for himself, for the desert, for the accident, for the war, but also for Mickey, too, for what they could have had but didn’t try hard enough for.

“Oh,” Mickey says again, and he presses Ian to him unapologetically, his fingers gripping Ian so hard they leave bruises.

 

 

**II.**

It takes months to fix him, and – even then – he still wakes up in the middle of the night with his knuckles shoved into his mouth, trying to quiet his own hyperventilating breaths so he won’t wake up Carl and Liam, his other hand gripping the sheets, trying to ride out the waves of fear that wash over him, the taste of the desert in his mouth, the blinding flashes of mortar flares behind his eyelids, the pop of ammunition, the shock of exploding IEDs.

Mickey had asked him once if he wanted to move into the Milkovitch house – this was after Terry had been sent to prison for the fourteenth time, but before he was knifed in the cafeteria with a shiv crudely made from a rusty bed frame, dying violently not from the stabbing, but the resulting staph infection – but Ian had said no, only because he knew it wasn’t a good idea, only because he didn’t know if he could do that to himself again. Fiona had given up a full-time job so that she could pick one with a schedule that allowed her to check up on him, to feed him his meds and make sure he was doing what the doctors said, her face shadowed whenever she looked at his scars.

Lip gave up the pretense of college somewhere in the midst of his sophomore year, but had moved out of the Gallagher house, living in an efficiency in a poorer neighborhood, barely spending any time there between his two jobs, the drunken hookups with sorority girls, and the time he spends with Ian, at first helping him move around when Ian’s joints are too stiff to move, and then keeping him busy and awake and calm. He looks at Ian and doesn’t see an invalid, like some of the others do, but he doesn’t see what he used to, either, and Ian pretends that Lip is helping him more than he’s helping himself just like he pretends that everything is alright.

Mickey comes over and Ian goes to him and they don’t talk about before, they don’t talk about now, they don’t talk much at all, Ian letting Mickey touch him everywhere expect where the fire stroked his skin, letting Mickey touch him everywhere except his heart.

Mickey asks, “Are you okay?”

And Ian lies and says he’s fine.

 

 

**III.**

The Marine Corp honors him with a Purple Heart and Fiona cries and places it next to Lip’s high school diploma on the mantel. Carl asks what it’s like to kill people and sometimes Ian obliges him and makes up stories about NVGs and rifle scopes and blood exploding in the desert air, but most of the time Ian doesn’t say anything at all.

Lip gives him a look every time he talks about re-upping, and – once, between two bottles of alcohol and a bad tab of e – tells him that if he’s so intent on finding ways to kill himself Lip will give him the goddamn knife right now.

Ian drinks and smokes and fucks Mickey and it’s not exactly a relationship, but it’s something close to not being alone, and – afterwards, both of them in bed, touching, but not intimately – he dreams about Afghanistan. The warmth of his skin when Mickey lies close to him, he dreams about fatigues and sand and the blunt force of the forty mike-mike in both of his hands, burning when the Humvee went up like rice paper and the fire licked the metal hot enough to make Ian scream, the smell of sizzling flesh sharp in his nostrils, his ears ringing from the explosion. He doesn’t dream about it always, but when he does, he wakes up and feels the burning (fuck) urge in his chest to ask God or whoever else why it wasn’t him buried halfway in the sand in Kandahar, his severed fingers sticking straight up out of the ground like he was reaching towards the sun.

***

He goes to therapy.

***

He comes back and doesn’t feel happy, doesn’t feel cleansed, and the doctor who sees him tells him that this is Post-Traumatic Stress and that this is supposed to feel bad for a while, it’s nothing that can be cured in a day or even in a few sessions, and when Ian tells this to Mickey, Mickey breaks a whiskey bottle on the ground outside where they’re lying by the abandoned Gallagher pool, wincing at the sharp sound it makes.

(Ian winces, too, and – worse – feels his hand move to his hip like a reflex, his finger searching for the trigger.)

Mickey says, “What are you even fucking going there for?” and Ian shrugs, flexing his hand once and then again, shaking out the tremors, and says he doesn’t know.

Mickey lights another cigarette and passes it over to Ian, opening the screw top on another bottle, taking one, two, three long sips. “He’s wrong about you,” he says. “I’ve seen fucked up and you’re not it.”

Ian wants to say, Don’t be so sure.

Ian wants to say, I’m not what you think.

Instead, he says, “At least he gives me free drugs,” which is true, but only because Ian has been able to con him into thinking that they have something, a few quick bj’s in the nice, clean office, where the doctor palms Ian’s head and calls him by some name Ian can never catch. He doesn’t tell Mickey this, but Mickey agrees to break in to the office on a night when the doctor is home with his wife, anyway, stealing a prescription pad and a lot of sample packs of pharmaceuticals that neither of them can even pronounce.

***

They fuck on something called sertraline hydrochloride.

Mickey accidentally tells Ian that he loves him, and Ian forgets to say it back.

 

 

**IV.**

In Kandahar, Ian used to count the bullets he spent.

***

One, in the eye of a shepherd.

Twelve, in the torso of a fourteen-year-old boy.

Twenty-seven, in the midst of a firefight in a small village, where a pretty girl with a scarf covering her head smiled at him through the smoke, her hand mimicking the shape of a gun, pointed straight at his heart. That bullet wasn’t from his gun, but he counts it anyway.

 

 

**V.**

Mickey had gone to prison because of his father.

That’s what he tells Ian, anyway, when Ian asks about it in the quiet of Ian’s bedroom, the daylight outside permeating the blinds in violent rectangles of light, Mickey passing him an open bottle of bottom-shelf bourbon without wiping off where he had kissed it first. Lying on the bed, whisper close, Ian had been bold enough to call him a liar, his scarred fist tight around the bottle, his voice soft in the space between them, and Mickey had glanced at Ian’s face, startled, before looking away again, never denying the accusation.

***

The way Mickey tells it, he was drunk, Ian wasn’t there, and Mickey had brought home a boy when he knew he shouldn’t have, had brought him home and maybe forgot or maybe didn’t forget that his father would be there, spit-shining a collection of guns on the kitchen table. Mickey had swollen red lips and a glaring hickey on his neck and his arms around the small, lithe boy beside him, and he didn’t get the first punch, but he sure as fuck got the last, his father on the floor, staring down the barrel of Mickey’s gun. And if Mandy hadn’t have called the cops – not so much scared for her father as scared of what Mickey could do when he had that look in his eyes, drunk and bleeding and angry, and maybe just a little lost without the Gallagher moral compass he used to carry around with him always – Mickey might have done something worse than two black eyes, three stitches, and a broken rib.

(Ian doesn’t say anything while Mickey talks, but he does trace the back of Mickey’s hand with his thumb, trace the expanse of white skin there, trace the tattoos on his knuckles, trace the scars.)

The way Mickey tells it, he got off lightly, just thirteen months in a low-security prison, general population, lots of friends who came with benefits, lots of cops who heard tales about the Milkovitches and knew to stay away. Mickey had learned from juvie, had grown up on the school-to-prison pipeline, so it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle, even when somebody took a disliking to his Nazi tattoos and tried to shank him in the cafeteria (Mickey lifting his chin so Ian could see, so Ian could touch that, too, kissing it softly for as long as Mickey lets him).

The way Mickey tells it, he flirted with the idea of pimping or running drugs, but using them (both) was enough, coke, pills, even heroin sometimes, breaking open the balloons with deft fingers and snorting it, licking it, feeding it to his cellmate so he wouldn’t squirm so much when Mickey fucked him against the cinderblock wall. He used and he read and he fucked and he ate and he saw Mandy whenever she would come, sometimes a fresh bruise on her cheek from her new boyfriend, sometimes a set of black knuckles from when she would hit back, and – most of all, most of fucking all – he thought about Ian.

He thought about Ian with him and he thought about Ian in the Marines and he thought about Ian dead somewhere, he thought about Ian with someone else, and he thought about leaving here and finding him and never letting go again.

(This last part he doesn’t tell Ian, not now, not ever, lapsing into silence when his throat starts to ache from the unshed tears, Ian’s mouth perched on Mickey’s shoulder, Mickey’s hand around Ian’s hand.)

***

The way Mickey doesn’t tell it, Mickey had gone to prison because of Ian.

They both know this.

 

 

**VI.**

Somewhere before the explosion – but after the first man he kills – Ian loses his bullet count.

***

Now, he counts scars and hopes it’s enough.

 

 

**VII.**

Frank returns to the house sometime in mid-June, appearing one morning after Fiona comes down to start on breakfast, hungover and snoring noisily on the couch, and Fiona kicks him awake and tells him to get out, but Frank just makes this sound like he’s dying and goes back to sleep. Ian hasn’t seen him since he joined the Marines, could care less about seeing him now, but part of his therapy is making amends with his not-biological father, so he waits until everyone leaves for the day – Fiona kissing him on the forehead, her palm strong on the back of his neck, reassuring herself that he’s fine, he’s been fine, he’s not leaving again; Lip forking over half a lukewarm Starbucks latte that he got for Ian but decided to drink on the way over; Debbie and Carl running out the door with lunches and backpacks and half-hearted goodbyes – before he starts to talk.

***

He talks about what happened before he left, he talks about joining the Marines, he talks about the desert, he talks about the war, he talks about the email from Lip sixteen days into his first tour telling him about Mickey’s prison sentence, he talks about Ian’s one fucking mistake, the one second he took his eyes off the road from on top of the Humvee where he was manning the Mk 19, smiling stupidly at the sight of two children playing in an undisturbed garden, the lush green of the grass stark and startling against the red sand, tells him about the only sound anyone makes when he turns his eyes back to the road and sees it there – “Wait” – and the explosion afterwards – the roll of the Humvee over an IED, buried halfway in the dirt of the road – the cloud of smoke, the fire, the sight of Ramirez’s dead eyes staring straight at Ian, Mitchell’s hands still fused to the Humvee’s steering wheel long after his body rocketed away from the mess, the ringing in Ian’s ears loud enough to wonder if he would ever be able to hear again.

He tells Frank about after: the hospital, the meds, his scars, staring mutedly at the mottled skin that he can’t cover up, and he tells Frank about Mickey. He talks about how they left each other, how Mickey ruined what they had, and he talks about now: how he’s not sure what Mickey means to him, how he’s not sure what they’re doing, how he’s afraid they’ll fuck up again – he’ll fuck up again – how he’s afraid Mickey will force him to leave again.

He talks about what he wants, Jesus, just everything that he wants but is not sure he will be able to have – them, his family, them, him and Mickey – and he talks about how he’s afraid that the voice inside of him that’s telling him to go back to Afghanistan is louder than the voice that’s telling him to stay.

Frank, dead to the world, listens intently, listens with conviction, and Ian doesn’t stop until he can’t talk anymore, his voice growing hoarse enough that it hurts.

 

 

**VIII.**

The way Ian tells it, he had signed up because it was the right thing to do.

***

The day Terry found them together, Mickey pulled away from everyone he knew. He stopped speaking to Ian, stopped meeting him, wouldn’t answer texts or calls, stopped coming by the Kash and Grab for work, never went into the Alibi, never went home. After a week, Ian started checking the hospitals. After two, Ian started checking the morgues and cemeteries, and once went so far as to run all the way to the bus terminal, bringing the only picture he had of Mickey, one of him scowling at the camera, so he could ask the employees if they had seen him.

The only thing Mandy could say was that her father had left too, made up some excuse about a hunting trip or some other bullshit, and Ian convinced Lip to borrow Kev’s truck so they could drive to a few spots around Lake Michigan, a few spots Mickey had talked about before – ones from his childhood, ones he used to go with his dad and brothers and uncles, ones he talked about fondly when they were alone together, Mickey smoking a cigarette and passing it to Ian, their fingers brushing together intimately enough that they both knew what all of this meant – but they only managed a couple hours before Lip had stopped at a bar somewhere outside of Chicago to buy him a drink and give him the “you can do better” speech. Ian had wanted to say, his face still bruised from that night, that Lip would never understand, but instead he swallowed his beer and took the keys, telling Lip that he could finish up here if he wanted, but he was going to keep searching.

Lip had shrugged, peeled a few dollars from his wallet and put down his glass and said, “Alright, let’s go.”

***

It was a month before Ian heard that Mickey was back, another before he talked to him alone for the first time since that night.

He looked good, he looked better, and Ian had stood in the doorway of the rooftop for a minute before he spoke, watching him line up empty glass bottles on the ledge for shooting, his hands steady. Ian said, “You’re back,” and Mickey had paused for a second, not turning around, not saying anything, his breath held in his chest like an anchor, and Ian knew Mickey wasn’t expecting to see him again after everything, knew that Mickey couldn’t stop thinking about what happened just like Ian couldn’t.

Knew that they were both hurt that night, not just physically, and knew that they would probably never talk about it ever again.

Ian said, “If you needed to leave, you could have told me.”

Ian said, “I understand we need to be more careful now, I know that, I get that.”

Ian said, “I can do whatever you need me to do.”

And Mickey had said, “No.”

***

His back to Ian, Mickey had told him that this was done, that this was over, that whatever this was means nothing to him, that they meant nothing to him, and none of this was what he ever really wanted. His back straight, his head high, his hands steady, his voice sounded sharp between them – sounded like his father’s – and Ian watched, listened, and called him a fucking coward.

Mickey had shrugged, uncaring, still not facing Ian, and told him that no matter what he said, this was still going to be over, and that neither of them could see each other again. “You always wanted me more than I wanted you,” Mickey had said. “I liked that, but we’re done now, okay? I don’t want you around.”

Ian whispered, “You going to go and fuck girls now?”

And Mickey had said, “Yes,” a little too quickly, a little too forcefully, his fist clenching so tight it shatters one of the bottles in his hands.

And Ian had let out something strangled like a laugh and said, “A coward and a liar? You are your father’s son.”

Mickey had turned then, finally, his jaw set, his eyes sharp on Ian, and he looked angry, but mostly he just looked fucking terrified, looked almost vulnerable for a moment, like Ian had spoken words that should never have been spoken out loud. He had been breathing hard, had raked his eyes over Ian, hungrily, but when he spoke, his voice was firm, cold, lifeless, and Mickey had spat on the ground between them, and said, “At least I’m not a fucking faggot.”

And Ian had left and never looked back.

***

The way Ian doesn’t tell it, he had signed up because there nothing left for him in Chicago.

 

 

**IX.**

They go to the rooftop for the first time since they’ve been home.

Without talking about it, they both silently agree to not mention the last time they were here, to not mention what was said, to not mention the day they abandoned each other.

***

Mickey lines up the collected bottles on the empty ledge and watches Ian hold his gun – the one Mickey’s father gave him for his tenth birthday – and shoot. Ian doesn’t miss, wincing at the sound the bottles make when the bullets pierce the glass, his hands hard around the gun, strong. It’s the first gun he’s held since Afghanistan, the first gun since they found him, since the hospital, and it feels familiar in his hands, warm, alive, and Mickey stands close but not close enough to touch and Ian makes some comment about how if Mickey had joined up they could have done it in a tent in the desert, laughing until he realizes that Mickey’s not.

“I almost did,” Mickey says, quietly, and Ian takes his finger away from the trigger.

“What?”

“I went down the recruiter’s office, but I couldn’t make myself go in.” He says this like he would say I’m sorry – like the few times he has said he’s sorry, even when he doesn’t say the actual words, this awful tone in his voice and the unshed tears lining his throat and the way Ian knows it’s hard for him, to admit defeat, to admit he’s wrong, because Ian knows just like every kid on the Southside knows that they’re all their fathers, and they’re all too fucking proud.

Ian doesn’t turn to look at him. “Was this before or after you were arrested?”

“Before,” Mickey says, and it’s there again, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. “Lip said he thought my criminal record wouldn’t be a problem. He said the Army liked fuckups.”

“I was a Marine,” Ian says, and then he realizes the words that fell from his mouth, the past tense, the was, and he knows that he will never be a Marine ever again. He brings the hand holding the gun up to his face, covering his eyes, and he breathes out slowly, slowly, willing his heart to stop beating so fast.

“Whatever,” Mickey says, and he reaches out a hand for Ian, but stops it short, won’t let himself touch.

“You talked to Lip about joining?” Ian’s voice is hushed, calm, and it’s the military training, but it’s also the years of not letting Mickey Milkovitch see him cry over whatever this is.

Mickey makes a sound like a laugh. “You’re mad that I didn’t ask you first?”

Ian finally turns to him, and his hand is trembling so hard and he’s fighting not to raise his arm, not to point the gun at Mickey. “No, you asshole, I’m mad that you waited until I left to care about this, us, fuck. Whatever we used to have.” He closes his eyes and then opens them again, but the anger is still there, the urge to hit Mickey, the urge to pull him close and kiss him and never let him go.

“Ian,” Mickey says, and he’s surprised at this, surprised at the way Ian’s voice is echoing between them, angry and scared and hurt, and he moves closer, sliding both hands across Ian’s cheeks, holding his head, looking him in the eyes. “Ian,” he says again, softer, and there’s just enough space between them for Ian to point the gun, right over Mickey’s heart, and Mickey doesn’t even flinch.

“Admit it,” Ian whispers, his lips close enough that they touch Mickey’s, that Mickey’s tongue wets Ian’s mouth, Mickey’s hands gripping Ian’s face hard enough that there will be bruises in the morning – and that later, much later, when Ian will wake up in Mickey’s bed and stumble to the bathroom, he will stare at his mottled face in the mirror and test the pain of each purple fingerprint, the wide, arcing thumbs that swallow the hollow of his cheeks, the marks he will later have to hide from Fiona with some of Mandy’s concealer, asking her to cover him up like she does for herself, her small, sad smile and the gentle touch that she lays on him, kissing her handiwork when she’s done, her lips warm on his face.

Mickey swallows close enough that Ian feels his throat move, and he presses the gun tighter between them, puts his finger on the trigger. “Admit it,” he says again.

“I love you,” Mickey says, and closes his eyes when Ian pulls the trigger, hears the click of the empty gun.

 

 

**X.**

One.  



End file.
